a Streetcar Named Desire Summary

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• We start with a scene description. Williams is notorious for including lyrical flights of fancy in his stage directions, such as, “You can almost feel the warm breath of the brown river beyond the river warehouses with their faint redolences of bananas and coffee.” • Basically, though, what you need to know is that the play largely takes place in a two-story house on a street in New Orleans called “Elysian Fields.” The house is between the river and some train tracks. It is late May. There are “Negro piano halls” in the neighborhood (Williams calls music from these clubs “blue piano”). • Eunice, a white woman, sits with a black woman (who is referred to only as “the Negro woman”) on the steps of the house. Williams writes that “there is a relatively warm and easy intermingling of races in the old part of town.” You can hear music and voices overlapping. • And, we begin…. • Stanley and Mitch, both around 28 or 30 years old, round the corner in their denim work clothes. • Stanley carries his bowling jacket and a package of meat. • They stop at the steps and Stanley roars out, “Hey, there! Stella, Baby!” • His wife Stella comes out to the landing. • She’s about twenty-five, and of a background “obviously quite different from her husband’s.” • Stella tells Stanley not to yell at her. • Stanley yells back, “Meat,” and throws the hunk of beef at her. She catches it and laughs. • Stanley and Mitch are already heading back around the corner. Stella asks where they’re going, and Stanley bellows back, “Bowling!” • Stella says she’ll meet them there, since she wants to watch. • Stella says hi to Eunice, and departs for the bowling alley. • Enter Blanche DuBois, as precious as her name, carrying a valise (i.e., a fancy-schmancy suitcase). • She looks at the address she’s written on a piece of paper, shocked by the house in front of her and the shabby appearance

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